So what? It's not like he's going to ship a bunch of black people to Liberia. Or like he's going to booohooo ban gay marriage. Or exploit the poor. Which are things everyone else has already attempted to do / is doing anyway.

Only someone who's not really paying attention could come to this conclusion. Ron Paul supports the biggest rollback of important rights and regulations out of all the candidates. It's not even close. He'd close virtually all important government institutions that provide some vital service to the public and he'd modify the constitution making Federal legal precedent void (which would definitely further the persecution of LGBT, and also ban abortion in half the country). And perhaps most importantly he'd end all industry regulations.

It's pretty damning that you're trying to dismiss these things by saying it's "not gonna be all that bad", or that "the others are doing that too". Not only is it not true but it's a horrible argument as well.

No they wouldn't. They do in africa and the middle east, however. But it's their culture right?

Good to know you're not only a Ron Paul apologist but also a "you're all dirty CULTURE RELATIVISTS" reactionary. That went out of style in the late 2000s, by the way. Get yourself some new dumb things to say.

look at obama, he couldn't even get fucking healthcare passed without it being some watered down piece of shit that makes very little difference, and that's with (at least according to chomsky and the sources he cites) 80-90% of the US population being for actual free healthcare.

It's something like five to three or two to one. Depends on how you poll people: the better you explain the proposal and its researched consequences, the more likely they'll be in favor. This is specifically with regard to single-payer healthcare which is a specific form of universal healthcare that would basically get rid of commercial influences as much as possible.

(Free healthcare, broader speaking, probably has the support you quote, but since you mentioned Chomsky I figured he might have been referring to this specific version.)

It's actually one of the best examples, in my view, of how democracy is broken. People want this. They've wanted it for ages. They overwhelmingly choose in favor of it when asked. And it hasn't happened, even though both Democrats and Republicans have been in charge.

Well electing obama WASN'T THAT GREAT EITHER, WAS IT?

I don't recall saying it was.

Even if Ron Paul is elected he's not going to do any of those evil things you think he will because democracy is about a bunch of fat, old people who came out of nowhere somehow managing to impose whatever they want because they're good at manipulating other people.

That does not vindicate either him or your defense of him.

Yeah I'm a reactionary.

It's the part just before the word "reactionary" that you should focus on. You must have ignored it because you can't deny it. Let me just spell it out for you so you can't avoid it: nobody was defending the treatment of gay people in Africa, certainly not under some pretense morality of cultural relativism. Yet you immediately pounced on the opportunity to defame that line of thought as if it's on everybody's minds. It's one of the most tired red herrings that's used chiefly by reactionaries who like to paint anything to their left as "giving other cultures a pass"—and by culture they mean race—so that they have a pretext for taking the moral high ground while their opponents quickly endeavor to save face.

It's one of the most tired tools of bored self-described "young conservatives" on Twitter and one of the dumbest arguments you can use for anything, ever.

"Hey guys, I'm a liberal and I don't care about gays being persecuted in Uganda because they're wonderful black people and we should just accept that their culture is different!" - a dumb conservative's view of liberals

Maybe I just thought that maybe americans are civilized enough not to hang people for being gay or rape women for being lesbians?

Well, again you're making an assertion that nobody is trying to contradict. Nobody's saying Ron Paul is going to hang the gays.

But his record contains anti-gay bills that he sponsored, and e.g. his ending of SCOTUS from being able to hear cases on the Establishment Clause could permit some very nasty things (such as sodomy laws) to return. One brief look at what the individual states have been up to this year should be enough to make one shudder at the thought of them being given that opportunity. Not to mention that he would effectively ban abortion in half the country by making Roe v. Wade null and void. (Probably more than half the country after a short while when you look at how pervasive the attack on abortion rights has been this year. They would waste no time in slamming various anti-choice legislations through in the states that have a fully GOP-controlled house and a Republican governor.)

Then there's the deeply racist and homophobic comments he made in his newsletters which span over several decades, which he initially defended, later tried to roll back as having been ghostwritten and published without his consent, and then later denied to have any knowledge of. You know. In case anyone forgot that.

He's socceristhebest.